John von Neumann Quotes

You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.

I drive my wife crazy. I'm hypersensitive, which she will often point out. She'll say something, and I find the way she said it hurtful. And she'll look at me like I'm an idiot and say, 'What are you talking about?' My radar is probably tuned way too sensitively. I wouldn't want to change it because I do think it's an important part of what I do.

In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.

She has no imagination and that means no compassion.

You see, we are not machines and we do not have lots of ideas in a drawer.

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

I think I'm a very intuitive actress.

I'm left-handed: I can think and feel at the same time. My feminine side is very highly developed.

My job is about emotion. My job is about feeling. This might be controversial to say, but I feel like sometimes data gets in the way of that.

Every child must master empathy-based ethics because the rules are changing; the less they apply the less learning them has positive impact

I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.

Compassion without wisdom is dangerous. It's what enables people to support the 'underdog,' even if the underdog is evil

I believe more than ever, machines will put new challenges, and that means we'll have to be more creative and more human, because that's the way to make the difference.

Could it be that there were other things more desirable than cold logic and undefiled brain power?

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.

The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can.

Graeme Smith is capable of reading other people's heads.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.

Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.

Whenever there is a conflict between the pure heart and the intellect, always side with the pure heart.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.